KaiYeves, I'm not trying to argue with you.
But the Real World just isn't that simple.

I'm sure we can ALL agree that it would be nice if we could get along and only throw a pie during wartime.

As a soldier that's been in that situation where it was bullets instead of pies... I ASSURE you PIE would have been much much nicer.

Sad reality: No Pies.

An effective and Strong military is a peacekeeper just as much as diplomacy and ambassadors are.

I, too, agree with Carl Sagan in Pale Blue Dot. But Many people out there, people who have aspirations of their pixel- do not care.
Because those pixels contain wealth that is quite useful across many pixels.

We are not in a good position to say, just yet, what means will be necessary to keep the peace in the future.
But I can tell you as a soldier- to the individual- if those like Hitler or the Axis rise again- Any And All Means Necessary.

Besides. What would WalrusLike have to say if Humanity stopped maintaining its military strength and then hostile aliens knock on the door?

Well, I was referencing the PBS special "War and Peace in the Nuclear Age", and the most of the emphasis was an a confrontation between the big nuclear powers. I do remember one episode in the eries called "The Have's and the Have Nots", that was about the smaller countries wanting to get nukes in order to be more equal militarily with the bigger nuclear powers. Large numbers of nukes in the hands of a small country, make that country a major power. Israel is about the size of New Jersey, but it's nukes make it a major power in the World. A fight between a midget and a large professional westler is not a contest; now put a 44 magnum in both their hands and you have an equal fight.

As far as the crazies are concerned, I agree that at the moment, they do seem to be minor powers, but that could change very quickly as nuclear technology becomes more widespread. Also, I think that in times of desperation, just about any country can get crazy. Humans may be the smartest animal on the planet, but they are still animals, with animal instincts alive and well. We have our own brand of "crazies" right here in the United States, and they have considerable power in our government. At the moment, they don't have enough power to dictate government policy, but that is also subject to change. Only 150 years ago, we had a nasty Civil War here in the US, because a group of people decided that they wanted to go their own seperate ways; there is no guarantee that history won't repeat itself some day, here or elsewhere.

I do think that nukes have helped keep the peace between the nuclear players so far. They give us a pause for concern; A moment to think about the consequences of our actions. I do not think we can depend on nukes to keep the peace forever.

hate?

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not about hate. They were about making enough shock to get the japanese to surrender. If it truly were about hate, we would not have even given them a chance to surrender.

I didn't know what the German meant, but the SS part caught my eye, so I looked it up on Babel-Fish: protection-graduates ss

Hmmm...

ETA: Well... that was short lived. I guess I won't be able to look forward to his groveling apology as he begs for my forgiveness...
<Sigh!>

Oh well...[/quote]

I think that right now, English or German, he's probably saying in Jar-Jar speak, "Isa being banished!"

<shudders, ducks for cover...>

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I am Mugs, of the Alien clan of Usa, Nordamerica, a Terran, of Sol. Human.

Whoever says "perception is reality" is daft. It's merely an abstraction, and often not a very good one.

I'll have to disagree. I'm with Neverfly on this. I'm of the opinion that the nuclear superpowers already have immediate and very strong nuclear positions on one another, and given any limited exchange (such as Iran nuking, or attempting to nuke Israel), Israel may respond, but you can bet your bippy that the red phones among the superpowers will immediately start ringing and a resounding "let's wait this one out, cautioning restraint on all sides, but not getting involved one way or another" is going to be the watchword of the day.

MAD is still in place, and it's not to any of the superpowers' benefits to begin lobbing nukes at anyone, lest it escalate. If the leader of any of the nuclear superpowers, whether it was our President, the Chinese Premier, or Putin, ever said "Do it," I think there would be an immediate coup, because saner minds that would rather not die would prevail. No one is going to blindly follow orders that would result in the destruction of millions, if not billions of people, including themselves and their families, even if the person giving them had the authority to do so.

On the other hand, if a combined body of leaders agreed that such a response was warranted, then the single-person insanity part of the equation is largely removed, and circumstances would probably be far more grave to begin with.

For example, if some country (won't even point to a part of the globe, as it's too political) were to sneak a nuke into the US and nuke a major city, I can guarantee you we'd respond. Quite probably not even with a nuclear response (we'd be heavily criticized), but definately a conventional one.

Case in point: Several times throughout the cold war, both the US and Russian sensors/systems malfunctioned, creating the illusion that we/they were under a massive nuclear attack.

Did we immediately pull the trigger on the other?

No!

We picked up the red phone, asked, what's happening? I thought the last time we met we weren't going to do this, yes, we'll recheck our systems, you do the same, if, at the last second it looks like you're telling us a fib, of course we'll launch, but for the next few minutes, we'll try to find out what's really happening."

Computer glitches, all of them.

Did we launch?

No.

Did we get close?

According to some sources, we got close. How close, I haven't a clue. I would suspect (I don't know for a fact) that both our and their warheads have either a self-destruct or disable function by which we can send a signal via satellite to negate it's ability to detonate. I certainly would if I had access to numerous satellites in orbit over all parts of the globe - better safe than sorry, and it gives me an additional 15 minutes to an hour or so to negate what I might have just done and allow that time for communicating an "OOOPS" to the other nation.

In summary, no, I really can't see the possibility of a nuclear escalation, even if some snot-nosed newcomer to the world of nuclear weapons goes off half-cocked.

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I am Mugs, of the Alien clan of Usa, Nordamerica, a Terran, of Sol. Human.

Whoever says "perception is reality" is daft. It's merely an abstraction, and often not a very good one.

The war was already ending, there was no way we could lose at that point; technically all they did was speed up the process. And not incidentally let us tell the rest of the world world "We Have The Bomb".

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Technically, it did exactly what Mugaliens said it did and what I said in agreement.

It prevented the deaths of many more people and an ongoing war throughout several years.

Don't downplay it by saying "Technically it ended it a bit sooner." That sounds so dreary and mundane...

Didn't say it was a bad thing to end the war early. Just that it was already winding down. What I said was true as well, sorry if I didn't put it in sufficiently Jingoistic terms for ya. How about, "We SAVED THE WORLD from an EVIL EMPIRE!!!!!11"


But that's OT, since two bombs ain't a nuclear war. The subject was about the thousands of much more powerful, much more mobile bombs that exist today. That, yeah, might still get used at some point, even if the threat's greatly reduced from the Cold War period. Particularly if some nutjob resorts to nuclear terrorism, and appears to be supported by some country that has the capacity for such.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

To paraphrase Tom Clancy: It is not the guy with 10,000 nukes that scares me; it's the guy with only one.

Will there ever be an all-out, bare knuckle nuclear war..? I tend to think not (although I am perhaps biased by my optimism that we as a species will not willingly destroy ourselves). However, I think it is a very real fear that someday, say within the next 100 years, some terrorist group will finally get their hands on a nuclear weapon and detonate within a major city.

Heck, I say hang on to them.
It's nice insurance and in the off chance we get invaded by aliens- they may come in handy then too.

Not so much, as we'd still need to get them to where they can hurt the ailens, and if they hold the high ground, they'll see 'em coming. Better to use dispersal as a strategy; the further out we expand, the harder it is to get above us. And in that scenario nukes will be not only less of a threat, but less effective as weapons compared to kinetic and (eventually) beam weapons.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

We currently don't have beam weapons and are currently not spread out.
Less of a threat does not equal useless or no threat.

If I can't afford the .44 mag and all I got is my .38 special, I'm not going to throw my .38 special in the garbage can thinking it's useless to defend home and hearth with.

Eventually.

You don't?

Schutzstaffel means "Protective Squadron."
The SS was originally established as Hitler's personal body guard.

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According to some sources, we got close. How close, I haven't a clue. I would suspect (I don't know for a fact) that both our and their warheads have either a self-destruct or disable function by which we can send a signal via satellite to negate it's ability to detonate. I certainly would if I had access to numerous satellites in orbit over all parts of the globe - better safe than sorry, and it gives me an additional 15 minutes to an hour or so to negate what I might have just done and allow that time for communicating an "OOOPS" to the other nation.

No, they don't. Having a disable/destruct option on a nuclear missile means that there's the possibility that the enemy could turn them off. Once launched, missiles are gone and short of having the ability to shoot them down (still quite limited), there isn't anything we can do about it. Manned bombers can be recalled which is one of their advantages.

It is if you're defending it from a high-altitude bomber.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

No more useless than a .44 magnum!

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

I think the possibility of a rogue nuke, detonated by a terrorist group, is far more likely. I'm frankly surprised it hasn't happened already.

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Angel of the Abyss
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"I am Ripper...Tearer...Slasher...Gouger. I am the Teeth in the Darkness, the Talons in the Night. Mine is Strength...and Lust...and Power! I AM BEOWULF!"